Expected Results of the Literacy Garden

The Literacy Garden will provide a safe place where marginalized rural girls and children can come and learn about sustainable farming practices in an environment that is welcoming and inspires them to think critically and find local solutions to their problems.

The multidisciplinary nature of the Literacy Garden will ensure that our programs serve as a way to help link girls to literacy, life skills, health, education, conservation and other critical sectors, providing access to powerful and important information for their development. By exposing the girls to a wide variety of fields and disciplines, beyond what is provided to them through the Kenyan governmental curriculum in schools, we hope to inspire a passion within them that they are able to pursue their dreams no matter where they come from, whether a remote village or slum.

Promoting literacy in a garden/farm setting will serve to connect environmental sustainability studies to literacy and show the girls that they can use smart farming methods that do not require much water and farm inputs to grow food and ensure food security and improve their nutrition thereby breaking traditional barriers like lack of access to land and farm inputs which limit girls and women's ability to produce food.

Vulnerable girls will be engaged in activities that develop their social, emotional, and leadership skills.Through group counseling sessions, the girls will learn where their food comes from, care for and preserve the environment around them, and become stewards of a more sustainable and beautiful Kenya.

The next generation of rural women will be empowered and will not be exploited through transactional sex from either fishermen who give women fish for sex or young men engaged in motorcycle transport business who give young school girls money or food for sex.

There will be reduced cases of early marriages, early pregnancies, arranged marriages etc

The next generation of smart farmers will be inspired through early exposure and exploration.

Improved food security in homes throughout the village as girls bring back farming skills to their families, and also utilize the skills that they learn throughout the rest of their lives.

A generation of leaders that are engaged with and active in their communities, working to catalyze and sustain positive change

Introducing the girls to permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices which advocate for use of locally available resources, recycling and reusing waste and organic farming practices, water conservation, and vertical farming techniques that do not require big parcels of land. Understanding keyhole gardening, banana circles and sack gardening will greatly reduce persistent gender biases women face everyday in accessing productive resources such as land and farming tools to produce adequate food for their families.

Learning how to fend for themselves will increase participation of girls and women in decision making, agriculture and entrepreneurship and empower them to take power away from men who have access to resources for fishing and motorbikes to earn money and take advantage of poor girls and women.